The Faintest Fluttering
by RoundBrainySpecs
Summary: Finch is not looking for forgiveness - he'd given up hope of forgiveness from anyone, including himself, a long time ago - but he owes Reese the truth about his non-involvement in helping the irrelevent numbers and what he cost Reese. Perhaps, though, forgiveness isn't as impossible as he thinks. Set some time after "No Good Deed" and before "Firewall." Never slash.


Author's note: Obviously, these wonderful characters are not mine. Thank you in advance for any reviews or criticisms.

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Finch glanced at his screen where the deceptively calm form of Reese sat reading in one of the outer chambers of the library. Of course he had rigged the library with cameras; he needed to know whether anyone had come into it in those few hours when he or Reese were not here, and, naturally enough, to have warning should anyone invade or trespass into the library's bounds.

He pulled the kettle off of the portable electric stove well before the water boiled and poured it carefully into his mug, the loose-leaf tea in the strainer floating as the water rose, releasing the familiar and comforting scent of Earl Grey. Along with the scent rose a wistfulness and a sadness in Finch; there had been many an evening he and Grace had sat curled on her couch, taking turns reading Dickens aloud, a shared pot of Earl Grey sitting on the coffee table in front of them. She had always smelled a bit like Earl Grey, Earl Grey and the slightly chalky scent of pastels.

He drew his mind back to the present; the thought of Grace was a pain as ever present as that in his spine, both of them, in their own ways, driving him to help the numbers the Machine had marked were for destruction. He knew what it was to be a victim, he knew what it was to see someone you cared about struck down before your eyes, and he knew the sort of man he wanted to be for Grace even if trying to be that man meant he couldn't be with her.

He glanced again at the monitor where Reese had not moved, his ever-present guilt congealing his resolve to tell his part in Jessica's death and try to express his contrition and remorse - as insufficient as the words might be. He was not looking for forgiveness, he could not forgive himself and had given up hope for forgiveness from anyone (even Grace couldn't if she knew, his guilt whispered) the day his mistake had been so graphically illustrated, but he could work no longer with Reese with the thought that perhaps Reese had mistaken him for a good man. He was afraid he would lose the respect and amity that had somehow been built between the other man and himself, but his guilt overcame his trepidation; he had given Reese too many half-truths and avoided too many questions. That day on the bench when Reese had asked him about Jessica he had answered truthfully, he wouldn't have been able to save her on his own (at least not during those months where he hadn't been able to do much of anything), but he didn't believe it any more than he believed that he wasn't responsible for all those other lost numbers, no matter what common sense or logic might state to the contrary.

He left his tea to steep and limped resolutely through the stacks - his glance lighting upon a book here and book there, his personal favourite books amongst the others he had salvaged and kept both because he disliked seeing them lying, as they had been by vandals, scattered on the floor (all of them were books he had spent good hours with at some point in his life) and to hide his favourites in plain sight. Hiding leaves in a forest of leaves, he thought drolly, a slight quirk momentarily coming to the edges of his mouth.

He navigated the maze of shelves and then proceeded through the door into the outer chamber.

Reese was still reading _Crime and Punishment_ (An oddly apropos choice of literature to act as an incidental underscore to my 'confession,' Finch thought .)

"Teatime over, Harold?" Reese's eyes never left the pages, his low voice sardonic.

"It's steeping, actually. So yes, Mr. Reese, in answer to your implied question, I have time to explain any words you may be having difficulty with; considerable though that list may be."

Reese gave him a stare not unlike the one he had given Finch after Finch had made that quip about managing the second part of the two real essentials for infiltrating Wall Street.

Finch nearly smiled. He had grown to enjoy these sardonic exchanges; it had started out as a way of Reese trying to discomfit him, and he keeping Reese at an arm's length, but it was now rare that any real acerbity passed between them, and even Reese's mocking vocal twist when using his first name had lost some of its irritation - though not enough that Reese had grown tired of using it.

"Did you need something, Finch?" Reese raised his head, his whispery voice vaguely amused.

Finch hesitated and limped over by the window, to Reese's right to feel slightly less like he was standing before a judge about to pass sentence, "I need to talk to you, Mr. Reese."

Reese just stared at him, the small smirk quirking his lips and the slight lift of an eyebrow far more expressive than any dry comment.

Finch adjusted his glasses nervously, wondering if this would be any easier for someone more comfortable with human interaction.

"A wise man once wrote that the opposite of love and consideration for others is not hate, but indifference…" Finch mentally chastised himself for falling back on literary reference, and proceeded towards his point, "What I told you was true, the numbers ate away at me. But there were years, so many years when I did nothing; when I said it wasn't my problem, that it wasn't what I was building the Machine for. Hundreds, thousands of people, and I didn't even care." Finch couldn't look at Reese anymore, and turned to the window. "...I saw Jessica's name popping up every couple of months since 2007. If I'd listened to Na- my conscience, found someone earlier who could do what I can't, maybe… maybe Jessica… perhaps you and she…" Finch's voice trailed off, and he composed himself; 'if onlies' were useless to everyone, only causing more pain. "I won't apologise for what I've done - for what I've not done," Finch amended, "because the inadequacy of such a gesture-"

Finch winced as the door closed, but he had expected it. Reese is a protector, Finch thought, a man who has probably never been able to stand by when someone suffered, to whom the very thought would be a grievous sin, and he, for all the lives he has taken and all the violence he has participated in, is a better man than I will ever be. Even if Reese returns, our relationship could never be the same now that he knows the extent of what I've not done.

Finch was alone again, gazing out through the cracked windowpane at the world as it moved below him.

Solitude is one thing, he reflected morosely, but a poet he had read a long time ago wrote rightly that "Hell is oneself, Hell is alone"; no tormenting devils (a fallacious concept of Hell anyway, if one were to accept Judeo-Christian canon), just oneself, alone, and all one's mistakes, failures and faults writhing and twisting and eating away at one. That was Hell.

"You forgot your tea, Finch." Finch's mug of tea, pleasantly warm, was placed gently in his startled hand. "One sugar."

Finch didn't dare look at Reese, the kindness of the gesture was something he felt reached far beyond undeserved and he didn't know how to react to it but to fall back on politeness, "Thank you."

Reese stood just slightly behind Finch, his arm touching Finch's shoulder with just enough pressure to let Finch know he was there - a protective gesture, one Finch had grown accustomed to, but one he did not know how to interpret in the circumstances; it went against the reaction he had expected from Reese.

They stood there for some moments, silent, Finch's tea untouched.

"I forgive you, Harold."

A tear from an overburdened soul plopped into the tea, the salt mixing with the sweet.

Forgiveness, impossible and unhoped for, did nothing to lessen or dissipate the burden of Finch's guilt, but something changed: the faintest fluttering of something so long dead he could not name it (life, perhaps? Or hope?) was felt in his chest.

They stood there - shoulder to shoulder - looking out at the world through the cracked pane, and neither was alone.

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Author's Endnote: The wise man Finch was referencing was C.S. Lewis (a basic summation I made once of something he wrote in, if I am remembering correctly, _The Four Loves_), and the poet is T.S. Eliot in his play _The Cocktail Party_ (which I'm inclined to think may do Finch some good to read again.)


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